bluejak, on Aug 31 2010, 12:47 PM, said:
Furthermore, with the mess that exists in Law 27 anyway, it is not entirely obvious how to rule under Law 27. So the thread is an interesting one.
Law 27B1b is an addition in 2007 to the existing Law 27 on insufficient bids. WBFLC apparently knew what they wanted to achieve with this addition; however specifying that in legal terms is not easy and WBFLC found themselves forced to have a separate session on this law before writing the final version.
As one of the persons who believe I understand Law 27 I cannot agree with a claim without any evidence to an alleged fact that this law is a mess. Instead I read such statements as lack of respect to the work done by WBFLC, or maybe even worse: As contempt of WBFLC. This does not help bridge at all.
The most common objection I have noticed against Law 27B1b is that an illegal call (e.g. an insufficient bid) cannot have an agreed "meaning", at least not legally, so it is an impossibility to rule if a replacement call can have the same or a more precise meaning.
Fine. Where does that bring us? Look at Law 27B1a:
.....both the insufficient bid and the substituted bid are incontrovertibly not artificial..... How can the insufficient bid incontrovertibly be not artificial unless it has a meaning? Note that Law 27 leaves it to the Director to decide if any of the affected calls has a meaning, and in case which (of course after collecting possible evidence).
If we accept the objection that an insufficient bid dannot have a meaning then such bids destroy the auction so Law 27 can, and must be reduced to
After an insufficient bid the board is cancelled and a new deal begins.
As far as I know this is what could be read in the very early laws on (Rubber) Contract Bridge. Such a law is for several reasons completely unsuitable in Duplicate. We want as far as possible to have a competition in auction and play, not in various forms of adjusted scores.
For several years the law on insufficient bids has focused on the bid being "natural" or "conventional", resulting in increased problems as more and more "conventional" calls saw the light in the world of bridge.
What WBFLC did in 2007 was to recognize the increased use of artificial calls and the desirability to preserve a normal proceeding of the board in spite of irregularities if at all possible.
The result was the new Law 27B1b based on the principle that "normal" (continued) auction and play of the board is possible
provided the replacement call does not add any information to what is apparent from the insufficient bid.
Of course this presents the Director with a challenge; WBFLC wrote in the preface to the 2007 Laws:
Over the years there has been a marked increase in the expertise and experience of Directors, which has been recognized in the new Code by the increased responsibilities given to them.
In my honest opinion I believe that we should appreciate this evolution rather than critizising it for no reason other than that we do not yet understand the new laws.